Becoming
Ben Chang, Silvia Ruzanka
two-channel realtime video installation, monitors, computer, custom software
2007
Becoming is a two-channel computer-driven video installation, in which two computer animated figures live in a minimally-furnished virtual domestic space. They stand and watch the viewer, yawn, sit on the sofa, talk on their cell phones, each on their own LCD screen. Alongside this simulation, another process continually manipulates their geometric mesh data, exchanging the vertex and polygon data between the two figures. Over time this causes each figure to take on attributes of the other, though distorted by the structure of their digital information. The process has none of the smoothness of a “morphing” effect, instead rupturing the surface of the figures and turning them into fragmented hybrids – two figures each becoming something new from the other’s presence. Becoming is a durational piece – the process is slow and continuous, lasting weeks or months.